Expectancy-value theory

Expectancy-value theory has been developed in many different fields including education, health, communications, marketing and economics. Although the model differs in its meaning and implications for each field, the general idea is that there are expectations as well as values or beliefs that affect subsequent behavior.

John William Atkinson developed the expectancy-value theory in the 1950s and 1960s in an effort to understand the achievement motivation of individuals. In the 1980s, Jacquelynne Eccles expanded this research into the field of education. According to expectancy-value theory, students' achievement and achievement related choices are most proximally determined by two factors, expectancies for success, and subjective task values. Expectancies refer to how confident an individual is in his or her ability to succeed in a task whereas task values refer to how important, useful, or enjoyable the individual perceives the task. Theoretical and empirical; work suggests that expectancies and values interact to predict important outcomes such as engagement, continuing interest, and academic achievement. Other factors, including demographic characteristics, stereotypes, prior experiences, and perceptions of others' beliefs and behaviors affect achievement related outcomes indirectly through these expectancies and values. This model has most widely been applied and used in research in the field of education.

Expectancies are specific beliefs individuals have regarding their success on certain tasks they will carry out in the short-term future or long-term future. The expectancies an individual has shaped their behaviors as well as the choices they make. For example, a high school student might believe that they really struggle on standardized tests. This leads them to expect that they will perform poorly on the SAT. These beliefs then impact their actual performance on the SAT. These expectancies are tied to concepts such as self-concept and self-efficacy. Self-concept is a broad concept that involves one's beliefs about their own abilities to reach their goals.Self-efficacy is similar in an academic context, because it involves one's beliefs about their abilities and competence; however, it is specific to certain domains, such as math and history.

According to Eccles and colleagues subjective task value can be thought of the motivation that allows an individual to answer the question "Do I Want to do This Activity and Why?" Subjective task values can be broken into four subcategories: Attainment Value (Importance for identity or self), Intrinsic Value (Enjoyment or Interest), Utility Value (Usefulness or Relevance), and Cost(loss of time, overly-high effort demands, loss of valued alternatives, or negative psychological experiences such as stress). Traditionally, attainment value and intrinsic value are more highly correlated. What's more, these two constructs tend to be related to intrinsic motivation, interest, and task persistence. Alternatively, utility value has both intrinsic and extrinsic components. and has been related to both intrinsic and extrinsic outcomes such as course performance and interest. Other research shows that utility value has time-dependent characteristics as well. Cost has been relatively neglected in the empirical research; however, the construct has received some attention more recently. Feather combined subjective task values with more universal human values and suggested that the former are just one type of general human motives that help to direct behavior.

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